Being Married to Your Customers, Revisited

This past April I wrote an article on CatholicCulture.org comparing customer relationship management to personal relationship management—in particularly, to marriage. This article was significantly lengthened for publication in The New James both in print and online, where I am now a featured business columnist.

I have worked with companies that are naturally good at relationship management, and others that are horrible at it. You can recognize right away the difference between the two. In companies that are horrible at relationship management, every perceived problem is automatically escalated to the highest volume, and the blame is always placed squarely in the other camp.

If you have been around multiple businesses, you know that there is often a negative tendency to attribute differing priorities between the company and the customer to “unreasonableness”. If the customer wants something that the company doesn’t seem to be able to provide, the company is being “unreasonable”. Likewise, the company thinks that the customer is “unreasonable” for wanting what it wants. If you have been around enough marriages, you’ll see the same negative tendency.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Good relationship managers both in marriage and in business make the “exchange of differences” productive and positive, work to resolve differences when possible, and ensure that respect and personal responsibility remain a focus. In this way, the customer/spouse always feels valued—even when the decision is to “agree to disagree” or to resolve the difference at a future date.

Peter Mirus is a business, marketing and technology consultant who serves as a guiding member of the Trinity Communications Board of Directors. He has served as director of design and/or application development for many key Catholic projects since 1993, assisting such organizations as EWTN, the Knights of Columbus, and the March for Life. A specialist in non-profit organizations, he continues to work regularly on the design mission of CatholicCulture.org.

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